Interventional medicine is the collection of medical procedures in which access to the site of treatment is made through one of the subject's blood vessels, body cavities or lumens. For example, angioplasty of a coronary artery is most often performed using a catheter which enters the patient's arterial system through a puncture of the femoral artery in the groin area. Other interventional medical procedures include the assessment and treatment of tissues on the inner surface of the heart (endocardial surfaces) accessed via peripheral veins or arteries, treatment of vascular defects such as cerebral aneurysms, removal of embolic clots and debris from vessels, treatment of tumors via vascular access, endoscopy of the intestinal tract, etc.
Interventional medicine technologies have been applied to manipulation of instruments which contact tissues during surgical procedures, making these procedures more precise, repeatable and less dependent of the device manipulation skills of the physician. Some presently available interventional medical systems for directing the distal tip of a medical device from the proximal end of the medical device use computer-assisted navigation and a display means for providing a visual display of the medical device along with anatomical images obtained from a separate imaging apparatus. Such systems can provide a visual display of blood vessels and tissues, obtained from a Fluoroscopy (X-ray) imaging system for example, and can display a projection of the medical device being navigated to a target destination using a computer that controls the orientation of the distal tip of the medical device.
In some cases, it may be difficult for a physician to become oriented in a three dimensional setting using a display of a single-plane X-ray image projection. Enhancement or augmentation of the single-plane X-ray image may be required to aid the physician in visualizing the orientation of the medical device and blood vessels. A method is therefore desired for enhancing a display image of the anatomical surfaces and the orientation of a medical device in real time to improve navigation through the blood vessels and tissues.